With one final push you look up to see your brand new baby, waving his arms around and crying wildly. And then you glance down to see what used to be a tight, very round belly, now draped across your abdomen like a pillow. It feels like a half-drained water bed mattress. It moves like a bowl of gelatin. When you stand up, it falls against your body in the shape of a rain drop: one the size of a cantaloupe. And although it makes a perfect cushion for your nursing newborn, you can’t help but look forward to the day it’s gone. It will shrink significantly over the next few days, but you will have to give yourself at least nine months before you can expect to see something resembling your old stomach. After all, it did take nine months to get that way in the first place!
I am so glad that Kourtney Kardashian called out Life & Style for altering the photos of her and her newborn to make it look like she had already gotten back down to her old size just one week after giving birth. That’s impossible for any woman, even a celebrity, and photos like that are what make women cringe over something that is completely natural and normal. Skin and muscle stretch quite a bit to accommodate a baby. Even if a woman does manage to lose all her baby weight, she will still have to wait (no pun intended) for her skin and abdominal muscles to return to their natural size and tightness. Despite the fact that I weigh less now than I did before I got pregnant, my belly button is forever frowning. To be quite honest, for most women, the postpartum body never looks quite like the pre-pregnancy body. That’s not to say it looks bad. It doesn’t! It just looks different. How could we expect anything else? I think the blessings that come out of pregnancy and childbirth greatly outweigh any body “issues” that result. I would never trade in my sweet baby boy for a six pack!